We took the wallpaper down in the dining room over the weekend and now I’m trying to pick a paint color for the walls.  I’m really struggling with it because the colors look so different on the walls than they do on little paint samples.  We think we’d like to paint the room gray, but I’m having trouble picking the right shade.

Here’s a few of the colors we’re thinking about:

Paint Samples for the Dining Room

The one on the far left is Sherwin Williams Classic French Gray (SW0077).  It’s about as true of a gray as you can get with virtually no undertones of any other color in it, but I’m afraid it’s kind of dark and might be too stark against all of the other colors in our house, which are various shades of beige and brown.  The color in the middle is Sherwin Williams Mega Greige (SW7031).  It has a lot more brown in it, which I think will make it blend better with the rest of our house, but I’m afraid that the color would read brown instead of gray once it’s painted on all of the walls.  The color on the right is Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642), which has slightly more gray in it than the Mega Greige sample, but I can’t decide if it also looks sort of blueish.

Our plan right now is to put picture moldings on the bottom half of the wall and paint everything below the chair rail the same color that the trim is in this picture.  We’re also thinking about extending the paneling that’s on the front of the window seat around the window and up to the crown molding.  If we do that, we’ll probably also paint that the trim color.  Whatever we pick for above the chair rail we’d probably do in a low sheen finish so it wouldn’t have the reflection the paint samples have now, but that will probably make it feel like it absorbs more of the light in the room too.

Window Seat in Dining Room

Any thoughts on which of these samples would be the best choice?  Or are there other shades of gray that might be better?

We’ve been talking about taking down the wallpaper in our dining room since the first time we walked through this house with our real estate agent.  I’ve been struggling with the decision of what to do with the walls after we remove the wallpaper, so we’ve been living with it for the last couple of years while I tried to make up my mind.  This weekend, though, we decided it was time for the wallpaper to go so we can get started on the project to update the dining room.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the wallpaper in this room came down just as easily as the coordinating wallpaper in the sunroom did when we removed it a year or so ago.  We didn’t have to score the wallpaper or soak it with a water & vinegar solution.  There was virtually no scraping either and there’s not much glue left on the walls.  We’re considering ourselves pretty lucky.

The Old Dining Room Wallpaper

After Removing the Wallpaper

Not sure that the dining room looks that much better now, but we’re hoping it will be a nice transformation by the time we’re done.  Our plan for the room is to have an electrician come in to replace the old knob and tube wiring to the light fixtures and then have a plasterer come in to repair the walls where there are cracks  and holes.  We also have a few places where the plaster is separating from the lath behind it, so we’re hoping the plasterer will be able to repair that as well.  Once the plaster work is done, we’re thinking about installing picture moldings below the chair rail that will be painted the same color as the trim.  Above the trim, we’re thinking of painting the walls a darker gray color, but I’m still working on finding the right shade that doesn’t look too blue or too tan (a task that’s much harder than it should be!)

A few weeks ago, we started giving our main floor powder room a face lift by removing the old ivy-patterned wallpaper.  Although it’s taken a lot longer than we expected, we’re finally getting close to calling it finished.  I’d still like to replace the faucet with something a little less gold, but, so far, we think it’s a pretty good transformation considering we’ve only spent about $175 on paint, light fixtures, and accessories.  Here are some “before and after” pictures:

Before

After

The "Before" Picture

Last weekend, we decided to start again on the project of removing all of the wallpaper in the house by focusing on the main floor powder room, which had an ivy wallpaper above the wainscoting.  The pattern wasn’t one that we found very objectionable in comparison to some of the other wallpaper in the house, but the wallpaper was starting to peel at the seams and, since it’s such a small room, we thought it would be a good place to start on a quick project.

So, last Saturday, I started on the project by removing the wallpaper.  I was glad to discover it was a strippable wallpaper, so the process was pretty easy.  I first peeled off the top vinyl-like layer to expose the tissue paper backing.  I then sprayed the tissue paper backing with a vinegar & water mixture to weaken the glue and peeled the tissue paper off the wall as well.  After giving the walls a good scrub to remove any remaining glue, they were ready to be painted.

For a paint color, we picked a Sherwin Williams color called Techno Gray.  Looking at the paint sample, we expected it to be a nice, warm gray color that maybe had a hint of green in the right light.  After painting the walls, though, we think it looks a lot more like a light sage green color that has a hint of gray in the right light.  We don’t find the color objectionable, so we’re not planning to change it, but it’s really not what we had in mind when we picked the color.

The New "Techno Gray" Paint Color

Even though I scrubbed the walls really well after removing the wallpaper, they still felt a little tacky from the glue, so I decided to start with a primer that had an 85% tint of the finished color.  After the walls were primed, I painted a single coat of the final color in a satin finish.  This is the first time I’d tried using a smaller 6″ roller that was about an inch in diameter and I thought it made a big difference, especially when painting a smaller room because it allows you to get so much closer to the trim, corners, and ceiling.  It also seemed to provide a lot better coverage than the standard rollers we normally use.  After removing the masking tape from the trim, I saw a couple places that need to be touched up again, but otherwise, the paint on the walls looks good.

The ceiling in the bathroom is currently painted the same off-white color (Sherwin Williams Modest White) as the trim, the finish is sort of shiny, and it looks like there was only one coat applied because you can see another shade of white peaking through in spots.  So, I think I’ll give the ceilings a couple coats of fresh white ceiling paint in a flat finish to hopefully hide a few of the imperfections a little better and clean it up some.  After that, I need to spend some time cleaning some caulk out of a few of the joints in the beadboard where the expansion and contraction of the boards over time has caused the caulk to crack and look pretty nasty.  I’m going to try the suggestion from This Old House to just clean out the caulk and paint the seams without re-caulking. Hopefully it’ll look a lot nicer than what we have now.

The powder room is still very much a work-in-progress, but we’re happy with the change so far.  Even though we didn’t think we minded the wallpaper when we started, we’re amazed by what a difference the paint has made.  A couple new light fixtures and it’ll feel like a whole new bathroom!

This afternoon, we started on what we were sure was going to be a multiple day effort to remove the green, floral wallpaper from our sun room walls. Given our previous experiences with removing wallpaper, we were crossing our fingers, hoping that the paper would at least be strippable and the walls properly prepped. Surprisingly, though, it turned out to be even easier than we had hoped! Though the wallpaper looked very well adhered to the walls and the edges weren’t curling even a little when we started, it peeled right off, leaving absolutely no damage to the underlying walls.

One thing we were a little surprised by was the fact that the walls were painted the same green color as the wallpaper underneath. We were expecting them to be white or at least something different than the green (and we were really hoping to not find any other layers of wallpaper underneath), but then we remembered a comment the previous owner had made about making sure to paint under all of the wallpaper in the same color as the background so that it would blend if the paper happened to shrink, showing the wall color at the seams. I’m not sure what, if anything, they did to prep the walls besides just painting them green, but whatever steps they took turned this into the miracle wallpaper that’s well-adhered to the wall when you like it and comes down super easily when you change your mind. If only all wallpaper was like this!

Here’s a photo of the room minus the wallpaper. We think all of the white marks on the green paint are the result of patching and sanding that took place before the wallpaper was hung since none of that paint came off on the back of the wallpaper we just took down.

Now the room feels something like a mix between a dorm room and a golf pro shop with the solid green, somewhat marred up walls and all of our miss-matched left over furniture that doesn’t really fit anywhere in the new home. I just can’t wait to see what it’s going to look like with a new, more earthy paint color and real furniture!

Shortly after we moved into our house last fall, we started the process of removing wallpaper in our new home. We started with the floral border in our bedroom, but never made it any further before the holiday season. Now, we’re starting a project to remove wallpaper, paint, and decorate our sun room. The plan is to strip the wallpaper in that room and then have someone come in to paint both the sun room and our bedroom at the same time.

Our plan is to use the sun room as a family room since we don’t have another space for that on the main floor. Since it’s accessed from the formal living room and can be seen through the french doors, we want to make sure that whatever we do will coordinate with the living room. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks walking through furniture stores, trying to decide on a floor plan, and thinking about paint color selections.

Here are a couple of “before” pictures of our sun room as it is today:

And here’s the rendering of the room with the furniture layout and colors we’ve been thinking about:

We think we like the general flow of the room since all four of the doorways are fully accessible (something that’s more difficult than it sounds with so many doorways in such a long and narrow room). We also like that the TV can’t be seen from the more formal living room. One thing we weren’t sure about is blocking the windows with the couch and tables, but the more we’ve thought about it, we think we’ve actually got a better view out of the doors on either end of the room with the couch against the window wall … and it seems to be the only way to get the flow of the room to really work.

The software I used to do the rendering (Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer) is great for figuring out size-wise what will fit, but I haven’t figured out how to pick custom colors and textures for the furniture, so visualizing colors and fabrics is still a challenge. I think it’s still definitely worth the time to do the model, though, because it turns out that the layout we thought we’d like just wouldn’t work at all!

Between the last house we lived in and this house, we’ve had our share of wallpaper removal experiences and it’s become pretty obvious that no two wallpapers in no two rooms are the same. Our attempts to remove wallpaper in our bathroom at the old house took weeks experimenting with just about every wallpaper removal technique we could find and we still wound up spending most of our time scraping wallpaper fragments off of the dry wall with a razor blade and had some fairly significant damage to the wall board. Needless to say, it wasn’t a positive experience.

Last week, though, we had some great luck getting the wallpaper border off of our bedroom walls. Even though our success is probably due more to the prep work completed before the wallpaper was hung, we thought we’d share our method for removal in case it helps anyone else. As a reference, the border we were removing was strippable wallpaper that was hung on a painted plastered wall.

Supplies:

• Tiling sponge (the kind with a scrubbing surface on one side)
• Painters tool or putty knife
• Spray Bottle
• Vinegar
• Paper Towels
• Water

	Step 1: Remove the top (vinyl-like) layer of the wallpaper. This leaves behind a second tissue-paper-like layer on the wall.
	Step 2: Fill the spray bottle with a vinegar and water solution. I didn’t measure the mix that we used, but I would guess it was about 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water. Spray the tissue paper layer left on the wall with the vinegar and water solution. Make sure that it is wet enough to completely soak through the tissue paper in all places. Use the paper towels to wipe up whatever runs down the wall.
	Step 3: Give the vinegar & water solution a few minutes to soak into the paper on the wall. Then use the putty knife (or painters tool) to scrape it off the wall. If there are any stubborn sections, try spraying them again with the water & vinegar mixture to help loosen the glue.
	Step 4: With all of the tissue paper layer scraped off of the wall, spray it down one more time with the vinegar and water solution and scrub any remaining glue off using the large tiling sponge. We found that the kind with a coarser scrubbing side worked really well to remove any small remnants of paper or glue left on the wall after the scraping was complete.

When it was all said and done, we had a few spots where a little of the paint had come off with the wallpaper, but it was nothing major. With another coat or two of paint, you won’t even be able to tell there was ever a border there!

Wallpaper – when is it ever a good idea? It doesn’t matter what the pattern is – it’s going to go out of style and, even when in style, it’s such a matter of personal taste. What I dislike about it most is that removal is no small task. Best case, it’s hours of tedious mind-numbing work. Worst case, it’s hours of tedious mind-numbing work followed by the dilemma of what to do with permanently scarred walls. I just hate it. And yet, we just purchased a house with several rooms of floor to ceiling wallpaper that coordinates beautifully, but still wouldn’t be my pick.

So, last week, we decided to start wallpaper removal efforts with the floral border in the master bedroom and bathroom. The plan is to start in a less visible area so we can figure out how difficult it’s going to be to remove wall paper from a plastered wall before we tackle the much more public areas on the main floor. Besides this, the wallpaper in the master bedroom was probably the most dated in the house … the perfect place to start.

Here are some before and after photos:

Before:

After:

Fortunately for us, the wallpaper in the bedroom turned out to be strippable (infinitely easier to remove than the alternative) and the wall surface underneath was not horribly damaged, so we think we’ll be able to get away with just a coat of paint. I hope the same is true for the floor-to-ceiling wallpaper in the dining room and sunroom! Now we just need to pick out a paint color … and maybe some new flooring … and a new bedspread …